Year: 2022

ARE VIRUSES ALIVE? Perhaps it is best to get on with studying the beasts rather than resorting to old-fashioned opinion-based discourses. Unless, of course, you are in the business of looking for unusual life in unexpected places. Then you need to have a grasp of the possible forms of living things. https://lnkd.in/d6yNyaW View in LinkedIn

BREEDING MACHINES. "Viruses exist for one purpose only: to reproduce. To do that, they have to take over the reproductive machinery of suitable host cells." https://lnkd.in/dPy3Zu6 View in LinkedIn

Boston public schools map switch aims to New maps amend 500 years of distortion https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/mar/19/boston-public-schools-world-map-mercator-peters-projection?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other View in LinkedIn

DNA AND RNA VIRUSES. "If a virus is a DNA virus, its genetic material then inserts itself into the host cell's DNA. If the virus is an RNA virus, it must first turn its RNA into DNA using the host cell's machinery before inserting into the host DNA. The viral genes are then copied many, many times, using the machinery the host cell would normally use to reproduce its own DNA." https://lnkd.in/dPy3Zu6 View in LinkedIn

CLASSIFICATION OBSESSION. "Biologists have a pronounced tendency to name, classify and order their organisms of interest: this compulsion has been dignified by calling it taxonomy or systematics, and has evolved into a science all of its own." https://lnkd.in/d_sQRmR View in LinkedIn

IMPRINTING HISTORY. "There are often violent disagreements as to assignments of organisms, however, which have often been resolved as much by force of personality as by use of quantifiable data." https://lnkd.in/d_sQRmR View in LinkedIn

REVISED PHYLOGENY. "Viruses are, in all probability, polyphyletic in origin -- that is, several major groups of viruses arose by several different routes, independent of each other, at different times, and have separate evolutionary histories." Thus, it would be impossible to have a ' virus evolutionary tree'." Genomic data completely revises earlier virus phylogenies. A very big deal. https://lnkd.in/d_sQRmR View in LinkedIn

PROMISCUOUS BEASTIES. "Classical approaches to classification are not suitable for viruses, as rigid hierarchies can't be imposed on organisms that appear -- evolutionarily speaking -- to been rather promiscuous in sharing their characteristics around." https://lnkd.in/d_sQRmR View in LinkedIn

VIRUSES: ORGANISMS AT THE EDGE OF LIFE. "It could be postulated that the replicate function of all RNA viruses is an ancient common evolutionary feature or dating ' cassette' assembly, as it is the basis for the existence of these viruses, and probably evolved only once. One may draw a neat phylogenetic tree on the basis of...polymerase/ replicase genes only." https://lnkd.in/d_sQRmR View in LinkedIn

MODULAR HYPOTHESIS. "According to the modular hypothesis, phages do not show vertical evolution in the Darwinian sense and it makes no sense to draw an evolutionary tree for phages." (Bacteriophages or phages are viruses that prey on bacteria). https://lnkd.in/e6G-N4S View in LinkedIn